BUILDING SAFER COMMUNITIES PROGRAMME 25 June 2015
BOARD MEETING 9 - MINUTES Ferguslie Park
Members in attendance / Other attendeesRose Fitzpatrick / Duncan Beamish, Scottish Government
Graham Foster / Kirsty Bosley, Scottish Government
David Hume / Neil Grant, Scottish Government
Martin Johnstone / Neil Hastie, Scottish Government
Susan McVie / Will Linden, Violence Reduction Unit
Paul Johnston (Chair) / Gery Mclaughlin, Scottish Government
Lewis Ramsay / Fergus Millan, Scottish Government
Apologies / Evan Morris, Chief Fire Officers Assoc.
Jackie Brock / Lisa Toon, Neighbourhood Watch Scotland
Lesley Fraser / Oliver Reid, Renfrewshire Council
Graham Hope / Alistair Shaw, West Lothian Council
Karyn McCluskey / Richard Whetton, Scottish Government
Wendy Wilkinson / Pete White, PositivePrison
Welcome
1. Paul Johnston is stepping down from the Board following his appointment as Interim Director General of Learning and Justice. Gillian Russell is now Interim Director of Safer Communities and will replace him as Chair of the BSC Board.
2. Members reflected on the pre-meeting visits to The Experience and KibbleWorks[1]. The social enterprise model was commended; it brings in private revenue, delivering positive outcomes for very little public sector investment. The Board would like presentations on this approach at a future meeting.
3. Investment in deprived communities needs to be about more than bricks and mortar; it needs to be about capacity building. Focusing on postcodes risks displacing the problems elsewhere; the focus needs to be on families. Community capacity building is cost effective and delivers lasting change.
ACTION POINT 1: Programme Office to invite KibbleWorks and Wise Group to present at a future meeting of the Board.
Agenda Item 1: Champion Updates
4. Martin Johnston (People Champion):
· Planning is underway for a community dinner in the Gorbals as a means of developing an asset map.
· Community champions have been identified for Gorbals (Tricia McConologue MBE, Bridging the Gap) and Polmont (James Docherty, Violence Reduction Unit). All Place Champions are requested to identify ideally two community champions.
· It is recommended that we invite Cormac Russell to provide training to communities and community workers on asset based working.
ACTION POINT 2: Place champions to notify the programme office of one or two suggested community champions for their areas by the September meeting. These are ‘go-to’ people who live and work in the local area and can help advise the programme and be the conduit between the programme and the local community.
ACTION POINT 3: Martin Johnstone to (a) approach Cormac Russell to ask him to undertake asset training in one of the BSC places and (b) update the Board on the outcome of the Gorbals community meal at the September Board meeting.
5. Neil Hastie on behalf of Lesley Fraser (Gorbals Champion):
· Visit to Gorbals on 11 June identified problems caused by local funding arrangements – they are short term, come from numerous sources, are tied to specific outcomes and generate a lot of bureaucratic reporting. Staff spend considerable time chasing funding and uncertainty is caused by staff being placed on redundancy notice until funding is confirmed.
· Lesley wants to test a new model of longer term place-based funding in two or three areas, including BSC places and will bring a proposal forward to the Board.
ACTION POINT 4: Lesley Fraser to bring a paper to the September Board meeting with proposals for testing place-based funding.
6. Lisa Toon in place of Wendy Wilkinson (Prevention Champion):
· Neighbourhood Watch Scotland is trying to broaden its focus from crime prevention to also include prevention of unintentional harm.
· This week is Neighbourhood Watch Week so there is concerted communications activity.
· NWS is tracking the impact of its communications activity in terms of the changes people are making to improve their safety and security.
· NWS is working closely with other partners through their Alerts Scheme and through Rural Watch. They also have a booklet available called Safer Communities, Safer Scotland.
· NWS plans to do some work with the communities in the BSC places.
7. Alistair Shaw on behalf of Graham Hope (Partnership Champion):
· Graham has written to all community planning partnerships to get feedback on their current priorities and concerns. He will report the outcome of this consultation at the next meeting of the Board.
ACTION POINT 5: Graham Hope to update the Board on his consultation with CPPS at the September meeting of the Board.
Agenda Item 2: Measuring Progress Discussion
8. Susan McVie (Performance Champion) introduced the Performance Workplan. This sets out work underway to monitor progress towards the Phase 1 stretch aim and suggestions for how to capture the learning from the local BSC places and measure the added value of programme activities.
· We plan to collate existing data – plenty of data exists (e.g. Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics, Scottish Public Health Observatory, education etc.), it just needs to be brought together and the analysis needs to focus on the ‘so what?’ question – what are the implications of the data and what action needs to be taken as a result of it.
· Discussions are underway with Police Scotland about releasing victims data. A proposal will be put to Rose Fitzpatrick about testing the extraction of victims data from the I6 database for one of the BSC places.
· Paper 9.4 includes 6 questions[2] and Board members are invited to provide feedback to Susan on these.
· Personal stories and case studies are a vital part of capturing the learning and measuring the impact of local activity. It will also be important to measure what is not working to help us disinvest from ineffective practice.
· The Performance strand now needs to know what work place champions are involved in or planning so that we know what activity to measure.
ACTION POINT 6: Champions to feedback to Susan on the 6 questions raised in her paper (see questions in footnote).
ACTION POINT 7: Place Champions to provide Susan with a short action plan for the September meeting detailing all of the activity they are involved in or are planning that they would like the performance strand to help measure or capture in some way. The Programme Office will supply a template for this.
Agenda Item 3: Phase 2 Update and Presentation
9. Richard Whetton (Phase 2 Data and Intelligence Lead) provided the headlines emerging from the national strategic assessment on unintentional harm that Hannah Dickson is producing. This highlights the significant scale of unintentional harm in Scotland. Most recent data shows that:
· Around 3% of deaths in Scotland are the result of unintentional harm – 27 times the rate of homicides and 3 times the rate of drug deaths;
· Unintentional harm is the biggest cause of death in children and young people in Scotland;
· 1 in 8 child hospital admissions and 1 in 11 adult admissions are the result of unintentional injury;
· Survey data suggests almost 700,000 people reported having an accident in 2013;
· Rates of emergency admissions and deaths from unintentional harm in Scotland have not changed since the mid-1990s: annual deaths have sat around the 1,300 mark and the rate of emergency admissions has remained around 1,100 per 100,000 population;
· Injuries from road traffic collisions and fires are the areas where there have been some improvements;
· Some common themes across all aspects of unintentional harm are deprivation and ‘family adversity’, children and young people, the over 75 age group and males;
· Average costs of unintentional injuries are high: home unintentional harm fatality - £1.6m, home unintentional harm slight injury (hospital treated) - £8300, road fatality - £1.9m, road serious injury - £214,563, fire fatality - £1.4m, fire serious injury - £155,000.
10. Unintentional harm is rarely given priority focus within Single Outcome Agreements despite its significant impact.
11. Work on the national strategic assessment will continue over the summer and a full presentation of the results and a proposal for a stretch aim will be presented at the September meeting.
ACTION POINT 8: Phase 2 presentation to be on the agenda for the September meeting with a proposal for a stretch aim on unintentional harm.
12. Evan Morris presented work done in England on risk assessing the older (+65s) population in order to target prevention of unintentional harm.
· Action to address falls would have knock on benefits for reducing fire deaths.
· There is an opportunity to embed this work in Community Planning Partnerships and through new health and social care partnerships.
· There is an opportunity to co-opt the community as the frontline in this work, with neighbours and small community organisations taking steps to prevent unintentional harm.
ACTION POINT 9: Lewis Ramsay and Graham Foster to discuss opportunities for embedding the approach outlined by Evan Morris in Scotland, perhaps testing it with a new health and social care partnership.
Agenda Item 4: Next Steps and AOB
13. The next meetings are on 15 September in Fraserburgh and 24 November in Craigmillar.
Building Safer Communities
June 2015
SUMMARY OF ACTION POINTS
ACTION POINT 1: Programme Office to invite KibbleWorks and Wise Group to present at a future meeting of the Board.
ACTION POINT 2: Place champions to notify programme office of one or two community champions for their areas by the September meeting. These are ‘go-to’ people who live and work in the local area and can help advise the programme and be the conduit to the local community.
ACTION POINT 3: Martin Johnstone to approach Cormac Russell to ask him to undertake asset training in one of the BSC places and to update the Board on the outcome of the Gorbals community meal at the September Board meeting.
ACTION POINT 4: Lesley Fraser to bring a paper to the September Board meeting with proposals for testing place-based funding.
ACTION POINT 5: Graham Hope to update the Board on his consultation with CPPs at the September meeting of the Board.
ACTION POINT 6: Champions to feedback to Susan on the 6 questions raised in her paper (see footnote).
ACTION POINT 7: Place Champions to provide Susan with a short action plan for the September meeting detailing all of the activity they are involved in or are planning that they would like the performance strand to help measure or capture in some way. The Programme Office will supply a template for this.
ACTION POINT 8: Phase 2 presentation to be on the agenda for the September meeting with a proposal for a stretch aim on unintentional harm.
ACTION POINT 9: Lewis Ramsay and Graham Foster to discuss opportunities for embedding the approach outlined by Evan Morris in Scotland, perhaps testing it with a new health and social care partnership.
[1] Rose Fitzpatrick will be blogging about the visit at www.bsc.scot in due course.
[2] Q1: Can you or others assist this aspect of work by identifying relevant organisations to provide data?
Q2: Are there other forms of data that would be desirable in informing the ongoing work in you place?
Q3: Has work already been undertaken to map assets in the local area and, if not, who would be best to coordinate this?
Q4: Do champions have ideas for personal stories and case studies and how they could be captured and presented?
Q5: What level of support will be offered to the communities to take forward any improvements plans? How could the Place Champions facilitate this?
Q6: Is there an appetite for these additional forms of evaluation and, if so, who could provide the resource?